Stories

Stories

The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 27,000 investigative stories.

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Search results for "law enforcement" ...

In a series of stories throughout 2018, the Globe uncovered instances of corruption within the state’s largest law enforcement agency, revealing numerous institutional failures and costly missteps. The reporters uncovered several cases of misconduct, such as a trooper’s history of racist online posts, a trooper's failures to halt a drunk driver and stop a fatal crash, and supervisors who never questioned a trooper’s drug dealing past. In the wake of these stories, the department opened internal inquiries.

A troubled Georgia police officer with a history of violence and dishonesty shot and killed his wife, her male friend and himself in June 2018. An AJC breaking news investigation revealed that prosecutors and the local law enforcement community for years enabled Officer Robert Sasser and looked the other way in the face of a documented pattern of misconduct. This helped set the stage for his final violent act.

By Brad Schrade and Ken Foskett

After a year’s worth of work, the AP found that law enforcement agencies in Washington state sold about 6,000 guns that had been confiscated during criminal investigations, and more than a dozen of those firearms later became evidence in new investigations. The weapons were used to threaten people, seized at gang hangouts, discovered in drug houses, possessed illegally by convicted felons, found hidden in a stolen car, taken from a man who was suffering a mental health crisis and used by an Army veteran to commit suicide.

By Martha Bellisle

Since 1999, more than 8,000 Arkansans have died by gunfire — about half of them suicides. Although many law enforcement officials and legislators say that gun-control laws might work, they are unwilling to act. The stories explore the effect of specific laws on gun violence in other states, suicide-prevention advocates' work with gun sellers to keep weapons out of suicidal individuals' possession, and federal law enforcement's efforts to keep guns out of the hands of felons.

48 HOURS explores the alarming world of murder-for-hire on the mysterious dark web and exposes an international criminal organization in a hunt for a self-described murder mastermind simply named Yura. During the six-month investigation, which covered 30,000 miles, Peter Van Sant and 48 HOURS uncovered solid information that led law enforcement to arrest people in four separate cases, who were allegedly willing to pay to have someone killed.

This was an investigative piece that relied heavily on documents obtained through FOIA requests and revealed that prosecutors around the country were receiving millions of dollars in funding from an anti-prostitution advocacy group that required them in return to conduct raids on brothels and stings against sex work clients. In particular, internal documents showed that in exchange for nearly $200,000 in funding, the advocacy group essentially required the King County prosecutors’ office and their law enforcement to erroneously label criminal cases they were pursuing as sex trafficking even though there was no evidence of trafficking in these cases. At one point, the advocacy group was even allowed to edit a press release issued by the prosecutors about these cases to include terms like “sex trafficking.” Legal scholars said that the King County prosecutors may have violated their own professional codes of conduct that restricts them from making sensationalistic “extra-judicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.” My article was the first to show that the independent judgement of law enforcement in King County and other jurisdictions may have been compromised by the strings-attached funding from Demand Abolition, the anti-prostitution group.

By Alison Bass

When a brutal murder rocks a small Southern town, residents and police are shocked. Could the new guy in town be the one who who did it? Yes, the cops say, he is. Case solved. But then another murder happens. And another. In the end: four bodies, two convictions, and one man in jail for a crime he likely did not commit.

By Kyle Hopkins

WCPO's I-Team investigated police use of force involving officers at 32 local police departments. Our investigation uncovered excessive force, unreported use of force and identified the police officer who punched more people in the face than any other local cop. We also revealed black children were more likely than adults to be tased by police.